Dear Fallout,
We’ve been together a long, long time now. We’ve been through a lot together. I remember when we first found each other. You were so young back then. I was a young kid in the Desert Rangers at the time, and you taught me how to repair Toasters, and occasionally find guns in them. God that seems like a lifetime ago, almost like it happened to someone else in a different universe.

Hey you remember that one time we found that Tardis out in the middle of the desert? That was pretty awesome; Too bad we couldn’t get in there. Or the time we spent too long wandering the desert, and Vault 13 ran out of water? That was pretty shitty, but we reloaded and persevered. And then after we saved their Blue-Jumpsuited asses TWICE, they refused to let us back in. The vault was home, and they sent us into exile… Assholes. So many Memories, huh?

Hey! I know what I wanted to talk to you about! When I was trying to Help Arroyo, and find the G.E.C.K., remember that loincloth I used to wear? I’m still “em-bare-assed” about that… get it? “Em-BARE-Assed“… Get It? Huh? Huh? Heh. Left nothing to the imagination. Oh man, we always end up regretting the fashion choices of yesterday, don’t we? Except for that leather armor, with the one arm torn off, and the one shoulder pad. That still rocks, and hell, between you and me, I’m wearing it right now.

And all the people we’ve known. Most of ‘em are gone now. I don’t want to get morbid here, but everyone we’ve known ends up dying, and its usually just us in the end. You… me… and Dogmeat. Hey, wait a minute. I just realized something; How long are dogs supposed to live? Because by my reckoning, Dogmeat is like… um… let me see here… 120 YEARS OLD?!? Wait wait wait! That CAN’T be right. Lemme see here… um… (scribble-scribble) carry the five… minus 22… no wait… (erase!) Uh… Fuck. Yeah thats right. 120 Years. How the hell does he have the strength to even walk? You know what? A dog that old is mighty suspicious. I think one day, he’ll open his little doggy mouth, and start talking. He’s gotta be a mutant-dog, right? A hyper-intelligent, mutant dog. I think in the end, in a bizzarre twist, he’ll end up being the one who’s orchestrated everything thats ever happened to me, and he will let me know that right before he stabs me in the back.

God I hope that doesn’t happen, that would suck. He’s been our only constant friend all these years. Well… Him and, you know… Harold. But Harold doesn’t really count. He’s just a mopey, depressed half-tard that we occasionally run into. I mean it’s always nice to see him, but he’s More of an acquaintance. By the way, between you and me, when you weren’t looking, he tried to get me to eat his head-fruit. He was oddly insistent about it. Kinda creeped me out really.

We had our good times. And we had our bad times, right? We saw a lot of combat with the Brotherhood Of Steel, and we learned their… “Tactics” for lack of a better word, but it felt somehow empty. We didn’t talk too much then, and I had a feeling that even though things were okay, that that was the beginning of the end for us.

And then it happened… We broke up. You and I were through. I thought, and hoped it was going to be a clean-break, but things are never that easy. You kept coming around, showing up unexpectedly, sometimes we thought we were going to get together again, but at least a couple of times we were smart enough to stop before we even got started again. We planned that trip to Van Buren, out west, but that fell through. I felt like a such a F.O.O.L. for believing in you when you suggested we try an Online only relationship. You were just messing around with my heart, and dropped me faster than a defective mini-nuke.

We spent years apart, our paths never crossing. I can honestly say that I never thought I would see you again, the only thing left to me; nostalgic memories of all our time together. I had moved on.

And then you came back. You were living way out in D.C. now. I didn’t think I ever wanted to see you again… boy was I wrong. When you came to me and asked me to go with you to the east coast, I went. Damn right, I went. And Oh, the times we had again. Walking under the full Moon; The Ink Spots playing on the radio; It was magic. It felt like the old days all over again, and you seemed fresh and new. I just wanted to get you all to myself, and explore every inch of you, mapping your every curve and detail in my head. I could spend hours, hell DAYS with you and not bat an eye. And I loved every minute of it. Shit… How many heads have we blown up with a single bullet? A Hundred? A Thousand? Too many to count. It’s been great, don’t let anyone say that it hasn’t.

But we need to talk.

I thought it was kind of weird that you wanted to move to Vegas. Its a big decision, but we always have had a problem settling down in one place, so I said okay. You assured me that it would be just as good as D.C., and it is. We’re doing all the same stuff, and hell it even looks the same. I thought it was supposed to look different out here, but I guess I was wrong. They also have WAY less music out here than I’d hoped for. I keep hearing the same 6 songs over and over… but that’s all besides the point!

I want my life back. What I’m saying is that I’ve spent a whole hell of a lot of time with you in D.C., and now I’ve been here for over 38 Hours, and I haven’t even been to Vegas yet. Now I know it sounds on the surface like I have a gambling problem, but that’s not what I’m implying. After opening like the 7-Millionth container last night looking for Ammo or Stimpacks that we can use, I came to a realization.

I want to leave. I desperately want to go home to my wife and children, if they’ll have me back. Maybe they miss me. I want to stop what we’ve been doing, but every time I think I’m going to, you suck me right back in, and I end up with another night gone and sleep-dep the next day. I’m saying that I am just a man… A Man who is too weak to stop.

So I’m asking you… no, I’m begging you, please just end this, and LET. ME. GO. I promise that if you can just do that, then you will have saved my sanity, and that of my loved ones. Will you please set me free?

In a wild west version of our world which just happens to be populated by random english speaking animals, the lizard with the fastest gun is king. That’s the message I take from this awesome trailer for “Rango”, the latest animated tour de force to draw in A list talent. Johnny Depp stars as Rango, a chameleon that aspires to be a swashbuckling hero who finds himself in a Western town plagued by bandits and is forced to literally play the role in order to protect it. This is the first animated feature for special effects company Industrial Light & Magic and they certainly look to have lived up to their potential on this one. You really get the feeling that the various animals exist in some wild west parallel universe and are having the time of their lives shooting it up with bad guys.

From the writer of Red Dawn and Apocalypse Now comes the story of a fallen America. The year is 2027. The world as we know it is unraveling after fifteen years of economic meltdown and widespread global conflict over dwindling natural resources and America has been take over by The Greater Korean Republic. Sounds like a downer huh? Well this is the part where we pick up our guns, join the resistance and fight back, at least according to the game. The idea of joining the resistance and fighting a common enemy is a theme we’ve seen before from John Milius’s work and I’d be interested to see if he adds anything to the mix we haven’t seen in other games and movies of this ilk. Either way the trailer certainly peaked my interest. Check it out and look for it on shelves in March of 2011.

Heres the official description…
Homefront is set in a near future America in 2027 when a now-nuclear armed Korean People’s Army invades the USA, defeating the United States Army and reducing it to nothing from the superpower it once was. The game is written by John Milius the writer of Apocalypse Now and Red Dawn.